On June 16, as part of the CDFA Federal Urban Finance Forum, CDFA brought 19 people to Capitol Hill to advocate for the development finance industry. CDFA advocacy efforts were focused primarily on the Modernizing American Manufacturing Bonds Act, which has been introduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Join CDFA this August in Minneapolis for Summer School, pick and choose your courses from a week-long series of training featuring the Fundamentals, Intro RLF, Intro Energy & Water, Intro Bond, and Intro Brownfields Finance Course. Register today to secure your place. Early bird rates end July 14.

A bill that would preserve brownfields funding at 2002 levels was sent to a House subcommittee for review June 15 as the panel's chairman hopes to see legislation passed before Congress' August recess.

More than half of all House members have urged the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee to ensure the future solvency of the Highway Trust Fund with new revenue that could be realized through tax reform.

The bill, which would cost $16 million over 10 years, could benefit the only two nuclear projects under construction in the United States by removing the requirement that a nuclear plant be placed in service by the end of 2020 to be eligible for the tax credit.

Sens. Cory Booker and James Lankford have introduced a bipartisan bill that would prohibit the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance professional sports stadiums. Their bill mirrors a House version introduced in March by Rep. Steve Russell, R-OK.

Highlights include increasing the Alternative Simplified Credit (ASC) from 14% to 20% and assisting new firms by allowing the credit to be equal to 10% (up from 6%) of the taxpayer's qualified research expenses for the year.

With Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) market has experienced large uncertainty that is affecting affordable housing deals from coast to coast.

The EDA is accepting applications for the Assistance to Coal Communities grant program. The program will award up to $30 million to assist communities impacted by the declining use of coal by supporting economic diversification, job creation, capital investment, and workforce development.

The IIUSA Best Practices Committee is collecting information from any Regional Centers that have experienced USCIS site visits at one or more of their project sites. If you have experienced a USCIS site visit, please reach out to Ashley Casey of IIUSA.

A new DOT paper outlines 17 ways to engage the private sector, across three major phases of project development: planning, pre-procurement and post-procurement.

The CDFI Fund is issuing a call for well-qualified personnel to serve as application Reviewers and Alternate Reviewers for the 2017 application round of the NMTC Program.

In response to its Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA), the WIFIA program received 43 letters of interest from prospective borrowers for water infrastructure projects across the country. In total, prospective borrowers requested $6 billion in WIFIA loans.

The Treasury Department is recommending that high-grade municipal securities be included as high quality liquid assets under federal banking rules, a stance that state and local groups as well as some legislators have taken since the rules were first passed.

Water infrastructure, for both drinking and irrigation, is especially in need of improvement in the arid West. Amid a wave of aging reservoirs, treatment plants and pipelines, and a Congress unwilling to pony up funding to fix them, the Bureau of Reclamation is considering private investment as a possible solution.

The White House stated in a recent meeting that its tax reform plan will not harm the tax exemption for municipal bonds.

States and local governments would have to match the federal funding in the administration's proposed $1 trillion infrastructure plan to participate in the renewal effort, President Trump said Wednesday in a speech in Cincinnati.